Better Reception then
they Deservd, or I Expected: and have now Ventur'd on a Translation to
be done by Subscription, the Proposalls whereof I take the Liberty to
send You: I have been so much us'd to Receive favours from You that I
can make No Doubt of y'r forgiveness for this freedom, great as it is,
and that You will alsoe become one of those Persons, whose Names are a
Countenance to my undertaking. I am mistress of neither words nor
happy Turn of thought to Thank You as I ought for the many Unmeritted
favours You have Conferr'd on me, but beg You to believe all that a
gratefull Soul can feel, mine does who am Sir

Yo'r most humble &
most Obedient Serv't

ELIZA HAYWOOD.

August ye 5th 1720

Enclosed with the letter were "Proposals For Printing by Subscription A
Translation from the French of the Famous Monsieur Bursault Containing
Ten Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier."[18] The work thus
heralded was published in the latter part of 1720 by subscription--
"three shillings each Book in Quires, or five Shillings bound in Calf,
Gilt Back"--a method never again employed by Mrs. Haywood, though in
this case it must have succeeded fairly well. Three hundred and nine
names appeared on her list of subscribers, of which one hundred and
twenty-three were women's. Few subscribers of either sex were
distinguished. There were, however, that universal patron of minor
authors, George Bubb, Esq., later the Doddington to whom Thomson
dedicated his "Summer"; Mrs. Barker, the novelist; Aaron Hill; a Mr.
Osborne, possibly the bookseller whose name was afterward infamously
connected with Eliza's in "The Dunciad"; Charles de La Faye, the
under-secretary of state with whom Defoe corresponded; and a sprinkling
of aristocratic titles.

The publisher of the letters was William Rufus Chetwood, later the
prompter at Drury Lane Theatre, but then just commencing bookseller at
the sign of Cato's Head, Covent Garden. He had already brought out for
Mrs. Haywood the first effort of her genius, a romantic tale entitled
"Love in Excess: or, the Fatal Enquiry." We have the author's testimony
that the three parts "mett a Better Reception then they Deservd," and
indeed the piece was extraordinarily successful, running through no less
than six separate editions before its inclusion in her collected "Secret
Histories, Novels and Poems" in 1725. On the last page of "Lett